


I'm Gonna Be Free And I'm Gonna Be Fine

by MercyBuckets



Series: Which Witch [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Homesickness, Missing Scene, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Shopping, Slice of Life, Team as Family, Wanda Maximoff Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:43:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6922702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercyBuckets/pseuds/MercyBuckets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda knows she is an Avenger but she needs to figure out what else she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Gonna Be Free And I'm Gonna Be Fine

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back. This one is less self-contained as it lays the groundwork for the next one. I headcanon the twins as quite young so that will be reflected here. Hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Title from Florence and the Machine

> Cause I'm gonna be free and I'm gonna be fine  
>  (Holding on for your call)  
>  Cause I'm gonna be free and I'm gonna be fine  
>  (Maybe not tonight)
> 
> \- Florence and the Machine, "Delilah

 

On Wanda’s first official day back with the Avengers, Sam Wilson gets shot. Wanda isn’t supposed to be out in the field at all but the Avengers get called in to handle a hostage situation while she’s getting the official tour. She’s told by Steve in no uncertain terms to remain inside the quinjet and let him handle it with Sam. Wanda’s happy to do just that. It’s a strange transition from the farm, where the loudest thing was Nathaniel’s occasional unhappy crying and Clint’s never ending home improvement projects, to New York where everything is loud and bright. It hurts her head and makes the  _ red _ flare up at the slightest provocation. 

She can hear what is happening over her comm link and there is patchy video feed in the cockpit of the jet, so Wanda has a pretty good idea of how the fight is going. Most of the bank robbers don’t stand a chance against the Avengers but the leader appears to have strength and durability that matches Steve’s. Nevertheless, it’s two on one and Sam and Steve work well together. They appear to have it well in hand until one of the goons wakes up and gets his hands on a gun. 

Wanda hears the shot and subsequent grunt of pain through her comm before she can see who it hits. It doesn’t matter, just the sound is enough to make her vision flash  _ red red red _ . Her comm crackles and the video feed snaps to static. The quinjet groans in time with Wanda’s breathing.  _ Red red red _ , Wanda’s hair prickles and her mouth feels dry. She can hear indistinct voices outside. She uses them to ground herself like Natasha and Clint taught her. The door screeches open.

“Wanda?” asks Steve. 

He doesn’t step any further than the doorway. 

“I’m okay,” says Wanda. 

Her voice feels thick, like she’s been crying even though she hasn’t. 

Steve approaches her slowly, followed by Sam who has a pressure bandage on his upper arm. 

“I’m okay,” Wanda repeats. 

“Was it the gunfire?” asks Sam.

Wanda nods. 

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Sam nods. 

“Barely winged me, I’ll be fine.”

“Was that a pun?” says Steve.

“When isn't it Rogers?” says Sam. 

Wanda feels a rush of gratitude for them as she tries to get herself back under control.  

“How ‘bout we wrap up this exciting tour and head back to the compound,” says Steve. “Sam can hit medical and we can talk.”

Wanda nods. Embarrassingly, her eyes well up with tears. She swipes at them angrily. 

“Hey, none of that,” says Sam gently. “It’s okay to cry here.”

“I was doing well,” says Wanda unable to keep the tears out of her voice. “I was okay.”

“It’s okay to not be okay,” says Steve from the cockpit. 

“Don’t we know it,” says Sam. “You should have seen this guy in the hospital after DC.”

“I was a mess,” says Steve amiably. “Still am sometimes.”

“Not to mention your eight broken ribs and internal bleeding,” says Sam smiling. 

“Minor issues,” says Steve reappearing. He shakes his head. “I think we might have to call ourselves a ride.”

“Problem with the jet?” asks Sam.

“Looks like some sort of EMP,” says Steve. “But the quinjet is resistant to tampering and electrical damage.”

Wanda who had been composing herself to the comforting noise of their banter looks up. 

“I did something,” she says slowly. “It was an accident.”

Sam and Steve look at each other, then back at her.

“You disabled the quinjet?” asks Steve careful not to sound accusing. 

Wanda appreciates that. 

“I don’t know how it works,” she says. “I wanted everything to stop, so it did.”

* * *

  
  


The next few weeks, Wanda spends a lot of time with Sam and Stark. Sam is catching her up on the basics of working with the Avengers. Mostly codes, battle formations and other things she’s never learned. Hydra wasn’t big on teamwork and she never needed to talk things over with Pietro. 

Stark is trying to develop tech that she can’t disable and he hounds her, begging her to come test it at all hours of the day and night. She doesn’t know what to make of him. He thinks so loudly that it is impossible for her to not read his thoughts. On the surface, they are filled with numbers and formulas but under that, all she can sense is guilt and fear. It’s hard to tell whether he’s more afraid of Wanda or himself. 

 

Wanda falls into a sort of routine. She gets up early every morning and meditates before breakfast. Then after she eats, she meets Sam where they go over past missions until lunch. After lunch, she hits the gym which is bigger than anything that Hydra ever let her near. She is especially fond of the gymnastics equipment which Steve says was put in for Clint. After the workout, she’s left to do her own thing. Steve gave her a book about American history that she’s halfway through. There’s a lot of information in it and it’s interesting but she still finds it hard to read in English. Then around dinner, Stark emerges from his lab and bothers her until she agrees to test out whatever new thing he’s made today and after that, she reads a little more and goes to bed curled up with Quicksilver. 

If she wakes up in the night, which she does, she goes to the gym until she wears herself out enough that she can’t see straight. Nights like those remind her of the early days at Hydra, when they couldn’t turn off their powers and Strucker tested them until they collapsed from exhaustion. Wanda prefers to wear herself out the old fashioned way. 

* * *

 

The first break in Wanda’s routine comes early one morning when she encounters Natasha in the kitchen. 

“I would have been by when you first came back but there was a situation in Berlin,” says Natasha. “Pancake?”

Wanda stares at her for a long moment before realising that that was a question and nodding yes. Natasha makes Wanda feel like she’s moving in slow motion, it feels comforting in an odd sort of way, like Pietro. 

“We’ve got work to do,” says Natasha handing Wanda a plate of pancakes with syrup. “We’ll start with the hard stuff and then take the rest of the day off.”

Wanda nods because Natasha looks like she’s waiting for a response and Wanda’s mouth is full of pancakes. 

“Did you make these?” she asks after she’s done chewing. She doesn’t bother to ask what they’ll be doing. Undoubtedly, Natasha didn’t tell her straight out for a reason. 

Natasha smiles. 

“Laura’s recipe, don’t tell Tony.”

 

The hard stuff consists of a trip to the US immigration office and a trip to the gun range. Both are awful for different reasons. 

The immigration office makes Wanda edgy even though they are just there to pick up a piece of paper that says Wanda is allowed to stay in the United States for three years. 

“Don’t worry,” says Natasha. “We can extend it when it comes to that.”

“Do they do that?” asks Wanda remembering how many good people back in Sokovia were turned down for American visas. 

“They do when I ask them,” says Natasha smiling with all of her teeth. 

The man who gives them the paper asks for Wanda’s fingerprints which Natasha quickly vetoes and gives her a form to fill out. 

“This will be for your identification card,” Natasha explains on the way to the gun range. “That way we can get you things like a bank account and a library card”

“What if do not know the answers to all of their questions?” asks Wanda suspiciously. 

“I’ll help,” says Natasha. “Just do the easy ones like your name and your age.”

Wanda writes her name in neat letters and pauses to count days before writing down “nineteen” for “Age.”

 

Wanda’s down to “Country of Origin” when they get to the gun range. 

“There’s a private range at the compound,” says Natasha. “But I thought you might want to do this away from the others.”

“Is it safe?” asks Wanda. She means for other people, she knows it’s not safe for her. 

“They used to contract with SHIELD,” says Natasha. “I booked the whole facility for the day with Tony’s card. We’re the only ones here.”

“What if I do something to you while you have a gun?” asks Wanda. 

Natasha smiles thinly. 

“I’m not going to be the one with the gun,” she says. “You are.”

 

The first two clips are a disaster but Natasha manages to talk Wanda through it each time. By the third, Wanda is able to keep the  _ red _ from overwhelming her at the sound of gunfire. On the fourth, she actually manages to hit the side of the target and on the sixth she manages an accidental headshot. 

“I don’t think you should trade in your telekinesis for firearms yet,” says Natasha but she looks proud.

 

After Wanda is finally able to get her hands to stop shaking, Natasha drives them to a cafe in Brighton Beach where they get a platter of dumplings to share. 

“My mama used to make these,” Wanda tells Natasha. “Pietro hated the cabbage ones so I used to eat them for him.”

Practice lets her say his name without feeling like the  _ red _ will swallow her whole but she rarely talks about him. 

“My first anniversary with SHIELD Clint tried to make  _ pelmeni _ from scratch,” says Natasha. She laughs. “We ended up eating Chinese take-out.”

“Thank you for bringing me here,” says Wanda. 

“Don’t thank me yet,” says Natasha but she’s smiling. “We aren’t done.”

Natasha orders tea and together they fill out the form from the immigration office. Wanda has to giggle when she sees that she is considered a “Skilled Worker” by the American government. 

“Who would have thought that all it took was a Hydra experiment to get a US Visa,” she says. “If this gets out, you’ll have a lot of mad scientists in Sokovia.”

“We don’t already?” says Natasha. 

 

They finish filling out the form and Natasha pays for the food before they head out to walk along the boardwalk.

“I meant what I said about getting you a bank account and a library card,” says Natasha as they stroll along the water. “We should talk about what you want to do now.”

“I am an Avenger,” says Wanda evenly. “I did not realise there was something more.”

“We all have something on the side,” says Natasha. “It’s best that way.”

“I have never had something else,” says Wanda thoughtfully. “It has always been one thing, vengeance, I guess.”

“Think about it,” says Natasha brushing hair out of her face. “You could go to school if you wanted.”

“I did not finish primary school,” says Wanda blushing lightly. “I am far behind.”

“There is a test you can take that acts as a leaving certificate for secondary school,” says Natasha. Then abrubtly changing the subject, “Can you read Russian?”

Wanda nods and Natasha turns, leading Wanda through a door with a large sign that reads "Bookstore" in Russian. 

“I thought you might want a book,” says Natasha. “They might even have something in Sokovian.”

“Russian is fine,” says Wanda. “I don’t read English as well as I speak it.”

Natasha nods. 

“I was lucky to have good English education early on,” she says smiling wryly. 

“Hydra used a mixture of Russian, German and English but almost all of the techs and guards spoke Sokovian,” says Wanda. 

“Can you speak German then?” asks Natasha.

“ _ Mehr oder weniger _ ,” says Wanda. “Do you think they have a fantasy section?”

Natasha leads Wanda to an aisle marked with a sign that says “Fantasy and Science Fiction” in big Cyrillic letters.

“I’ll be by magazines,” says Natasha before leaving Wanda to browse. 

As Wanda looks through the books, she thinks about what Natasha had said, that Wanda will have a bank account, that she could go back to school. It is still new to think of herself as a person instead of a weapon. She was with Hydra for so long. She doesn’t know how she feels about it yet. Sam keeps telling her that she has to find out who she is without Hydra and without Pietro. Maybe this is part of it. 

Wanda picks out a book mostly for the cover which looks very dramatic with an old man holding a battle axe. It’s the sort of thing Pietro would have made fun of her for reading. She finds Natasha in the magazine aisle reading a Russian copy of “In Style”. 

“I didn’t realize that you read gossip magazines,” says Wanda. “Does Clint know?”

“Clint’s the one who got me hooked on them,” says Natasha. “So the better question is does Laura know what a bad influence he is on me?”

Natasha buys their books speaking to the cashier in rapid-fire Russian that Wanda struggles to keep up with. Then they go to a bakery to buy pastries. 

“For the rest the Avengers,” says Natasha. “So they don’t get jealous.”

* * *

 

 

By the time they finish at the bakery, Wanda has an armful of white cardboard boxes and the sun has started to go down. They drive back to the compound in companionable silence nibbling on  _ kolachki _ . 

Sam and Steve are in the kitchen making dinner when they get back. 

“Did you enjoy your day out?” asks Steve. He’s cutting onions and blinking rapidly. 

“The great Captain America defeated by a vegetable,” says Natasha teasingly. 

“It was great,” says Wanda. “Can I put these on the counter?” she adds nodding at the boxes. 

“Shut up Romanoff,” says Steve. “I don’t see you offering to help.”

“There’s space over here,” says Sam who is frying meatballs at the stove. 

“I brought dessert didn’t I,” says Natasha sticking her tongue out. 

“How many did she eat in the car?” Sam asks Wanda wickedly. 

Wanda giggles. 

“Are you calling me fat, Wilson?” says Natasha. “I’m hurt.”

Steve, who has finished with the onions, joins Wanda. 

“I’m glad you had a good time today,” he says. “I know it can be hard.”

Wanda squeezes his hand hard. 

“You better not be stealing a pastry Rogers,” says Sam. 

“He will not get past me,” says Wanda smiling. “I am an Avenger.”


End file.
